


A Kind of Poetry

by bea_bickerknife



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Backstory ahoy, F/M, Gratuitous and emotionally taxing use of Francis William Bourdillon, Onward Came the Feels, The Poem™, Valentine's (Freaking) Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-04-14 08:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14131968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bea_bickerknife/pseuds/bea_bickerknife
Summary: On a cold day in the middle of February, at the top of a snowy hill, Olaf finally got it right.





	A Kind of Poetry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunset_oasis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunset_oasis/gifts).



> As ever, I own none of the characters in this work, nor do I derive any remuneration from its posting.

If you have ever studied a foreign language, then you have likely noticed that the words and phrases you recall most easily are often the ones that have caused you the most trouble. If, for instance, you memorize the Russian word _babochka_ as part of a list of various animals, you may remember later that it means “butterfly.” If, however, you mispronounce the word as _babushka_ while describing your butterfly collection and consequently find yourself confined to a drab and sinister room in a Siberian sanitarium, you are unlikely ever to forget either the word for butterfly ( _babochka_ ), the word for grandmother ( _babushka_ ), or the fact that it is unwise to inform members of the Novosibirsk Entomological Society that you have on multiple occasions captured various elderly women in nets before depriving them of oxygen, jabbing pins through them, and preserving them under glass.

Olaf had never bothered to learn a second language – _after all_ , he liked to point out, _there’s no point to a code if a bunch of foreigners understand it too_ – but when it comes to his running list of Things Kit Snicket Doesn’t Like, the entries that stand out are the ones he’s gotten wrong.

Kit Snicket doesn’t like chocolate, no matter how nice a confectionery he steals it from.

Kit Snicket doesn’t like red wine, no matter how expensive a bottle he orders from the mustachioed waiter at the bistro across the street from the theater. 

Kit Snicket _especially_ doesn’t like roses, no matter how many times he apologizes for sending her into anaphylactic shock with a surprise bouquet on her writing desk.

Kit Snicket likes bold tattoos and soft clothes and fast cars and old poetry, and as they crunch in tandem over the crust of snow that blankets the park, the collars of their coats turned up against the bitter February wind, Olaf reassures himself that this time, he won't let himself ruin it.

On his way across town, he passed a dozen candy shop displays of heart-shaped boxes, five liquor stores (one of which he had not yet been forbidden from entering), and more sidewalk flower stalls than he cared to count, but he remained resolute– a phrase which here means “had already learned those particular lessons, and chose not to earn himself a refresher course.” A trip to the tattoo parlor had seemed too forward. He knew better than to guess at Kit’s size in any of the boutiques in the Garment District, regardless of how many times Esmé insisted that he could “just do it by eye, _honestly_ , Olaf, it’s not that hard, find something that would fit _me_ , look at the tag, multiply by three, and there you have it.” His bank account couldn’t have covered so much as a hood ornament on the kind of cars Kit liked, and anyway, the last time he’d brought her one of those, she’d marched him straight back to the dealership and loomed over him, cross-armed and narrow-eyed, as he reattached it to its carbon fiber mount at the front of the first automobile he’d ever been unable to hotwire. 

Which is how he comes to find himself empty-handed and freezing, armed with nothing but a poem, trudging uphill in the dark beside the girl of his dreams on Valentine’s Day.

“Remind me again,” huffs Kit, her breath clouding the air in front of her, “why we’re doing this?”

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“And it’s an outdoor-only thing?”

“Well, _no_ , but I…” Olaf can feel a flush creeping up his neck toward his face. _Maybe she’ll think it’s rugged and outdoorsy_ , he tells himself. _Because of the cold._ _Vikings had red cheeks, and everyone thinks **they’re** handsome_.

“Then what is it? You thought the restaurant was bugged? You can only say it if you’re five degrees from hypothermia? What?” 

“I’ll tell you at the top of the – ”  

She shoots off ahead of him, scrambling the last few paces before turning to grin down at him, blonde hair whipping in the wind where it’s escaped from her red wool cap. “Come on,” she shouts gleefully. “I’m at the top! You wouldn’t go back on a promise, would you?”

 _Not to you_ , he wants to say, _never to you_ , but there’s an order to these things. Reaching the brow of the hill, he draws even with her, gasps in a frigid lungful of air, and makes a sweeping gesture toward the sky. “‘The night has a thousand eyes,’” he begins in his most resonant baritone, “‘and the day but one’ – ” 

Kit’s eyes are brown. Like most people – _but unlike the night_ , Olaf notes, and fights back a burst of anxious laughter – she has only two of them, and they both begin to widen, as if she’s realized what he’s trying to do.

“Olaf, you – ” 

 “Yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun.”

“Olaf, I know the poem.”

Of course she knows it, _of course she knows it_ , she’s the one who gave him the book where he found the damn thing in the first place, but he plows ahead, racing to finish before his nerves fail him.  “The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one.” His own heart is pounding in his throat as he approaches the final, crucial line. “Yet the light of a whole life dies when l– ”

“ _Olaf_.” Kit’s hands are warm, the kind of warm he can feel even through the thick wool of her gloves as she reaches up to cup his cheeks, but then she’s kissing him and he forgets that he’s ever been cold.  

It’s not how he planned it. It never is.

But for once in his life, he’s gotten it right.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was requested by Tumblr user @penultimatesugarbowl in the winter of 2017.


End file.
